Computers and algorithms of stunning power are the catalysts for a new art movement which fuses art with science and technology. There are naysayers who deny that this new avant-garde exists, but they are already marginal. Artists I interviewed told me, “What’s the big deal?” – This fusion is here already; “We’re it.” These artists work in the 21st century fields of sound art, data visualisation art, media art and robotic art, to name but a few. The result of all this is that aesthetics and beauty are being redefined as art, science and technology. In my new book Colliding Worlds: How Cutting-Edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art I call this new fusion ‘artsci’, for want of a better name. In times to come, it will surely be referred to simply as art.
Science and technology have always played a part in art, such as in the chemistry of paint, lighting, colour theory and photography. Back in the time of Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer there was no distinction between artist and scientist.
The onset of the Age of Enlightenment in the late seventeenth century caused a rupture between art and science. Art was relegated to amusement and decoration while science was considered the quest for truth. But by the end of the 19th century a desire was developing for a rapprochement. […]
From The New Avant-Garde – Scenario Magazine 05:2014
Alright Sheldon is actually art personified. Many avant garde frontiers have historically died quick deaths and or faded out of view into some niche….this new amalgamation, synergy, is necessarily created by the mediums which now exist to create a mutual dynamic…will this reveal greater human potential and expression or mute the arts as obsolete in a slow historical fade?